Certain data storage system operations may involve creating a file that is wholly or partly a clone or other copy of another file. For example, certain snapshot and/or related technologies may involve creating a clone or other copy of a file or set of files.
Data storage systems may be configured to take advantage of the fact that files created by cloning or otherwise copying existing files have, at least initially, a great deal of data in common with the file based on which they were created. Deduplication storage systems, for example, may store each data segment only once, and may for each file that includes a given segment include only a pointer to the single stored instance of the segment.